


from Rio with love

by Goose_Boy



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Clint Barton-centric, Deaf Clint Barton, F/M, Miscommunication, Sort of cute meet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-08
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:34:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22178638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goose_Boy/pseuds/Goose_Boy
Summary: One of these days, he was going to get his head out of his ass about his handler. Hunt her down, talk to her, put a face to the voice that had overtaken his dreams. And he would, as soon as he stopped feeling like such a creep every time he saw Pietro's girl.
Relationships: Clint Barton/Darcy Lewis
Comments: 20
Kudos: 265





	from Rio with love

**Author's Note:**

> Hiya darlin's, ready for some good old fashioned miscommunication? Because I had an absolute blast writing this! Feel free to leave me your thoughts!

“Now we have to trash an alias, fantastic.”

“What, like it's going to matter that I beat him at poker?”

“You were supposed to beat him at poker! That was part of the plan!”

“Then I don-”

“You  _ weren’t _ supposed to insulted his wife by saying that she looks like a fifteen year old child bride-”

“Okay, but she does kind o-”

“You certainly weren’t supposed to mock the legality of his marriage-”

“It  _ shouldn’t _ be legal, I don’t know what yo-”

“And you seriously shouldn’t ha-go left, there’s an elevator thirty meters down. I can get it open when you get to it, but I need you to repel down the shaft.”

“My extraction was supposed to be on the roof!”

“Your extraction isn’t for another five and a half hours, Barton, I’m having to reroute them. I need your ass down that elevator shaft if you know what's good for you.”

The doors came open as if on cue, just close enough that he could immediately toss himself into the shaft. Empty, a floodlight pit down toward one of the basement levels with the elevator cart itself stalled two floors overhead. Breath catching in his chest and he grasped at the cables across the way, gloved palms slipping just enough that he swore. Scrambled to hold onto the ledge even as he gauged the distance between himself and the bottom. 

“Barton, baby, I can’t hold the elevator long, you need to-”

“Fuck!”

An aggravated growl that pulled from his throat and he threw himself back, away from the wall, freefall down the shaft until he caught at the cable. Felt the friction heat in his gloves as he skidded down, as the doors some ways above snapped shut. Fifty meters was more than he wanted to fall, a descent he didn’t want to make and Clint grunted at the pressure on his shoulders.

“Exits gonna be opening on your right!”

Crackle of sound and sure enough, the doors slapped open with a thunderous sound. Quiet in the hall, quiet past the throb of his own heart in his ears, the rattling pump of his blood rushing as he launched himself into the opening. And the hall was empty, just like that, let out into a brilliantly, beautifully quiet corridor that didn’t have a single open door or guard spilling out of a stairwell. Just him and the woman in his ear. 

“Fuck, Darcy.”

Wheezy laughter, full bellied and a punchy kind of sweet because it was too brash, too unrestrained and she breathed with it in his ear. Made his heart catch, made his chest burn, damn her and the way she didn’t know what she did to him. 

“I know, trust me, I am-okay, okay, you need to lose the jacket.”

“Darcy, darlin’, all you ever had to do was as-”

“Jacket and tie down the shaft, go right to the floor lobby and theres a skyway bridge to the casino. C’mon hot shot, move it.”

He couldn’t help the way he grinned, curl of it so broad it made his face hurt. Kicked at that drum in his chest that beat a tattoo of her name into his ribs, she’d made a home for herself there from her laughter and the way she crooned his name like the prettiest song he’d ever heard. Orders he’d never thought to not follow, a voice he’d never questioned since she’d kept him alive by sheer force of will in Sydney, he made quick work of the hall until he reached a corner. 

“Walk.”

What would she say if she knew what she did to him? That she tied him in knots, made him feel less like the agent he’d become and more like the bumbling circus boy he had once been? Natasha thought him hopeless for all that the rest of their team didn’t know, but how was he supposed to handle somebody that he couldn’t see?

Brightly lit, airy and filled with a few tourists and dignitaries all either going to or leaving their rooms for the busy streets below, the casino across the walkway. He joined the thin traffic flow onto the skywalk, ambled towards the flashing lights and the slot machines amidst business men and honeymoon couples who would never know enough. 

“I always wanted to go to Rio.”

Wistful, a dreamy kind of far away, she knew damn well he couldn’t respond. Not without getting caught, looking like some sort of lunatic when he didn’t even have his burner out. She just talked to herself instead like she always did at times like this, little things that said everything and nothing all at once that taught him about her even if he didn’t know her. Her favorite color was the soft mint a victorian house had been painted four missions back, but he didn't know what color her eyes were. She absolutely loved the lipstick a mark had worn in Tokyo a year ago but he wasn't sure if she wore any herself. Weather she liked, things she hated, a memory of grumbling at the plethora of moths that had swept out at him from an abandoned building on the last mission.

She wasn't a fan of bugs and her favorite weather was rain, and Clint wondered if she knew how much of a fan of her he was.

Dripping crystal chandeliers and bright lights, the casino held a crowd that the hotel hadn't. Walking became tighter, shoulders somewhere between squared and loose so he could slip through the mesh of people with ease. Clint listened to her hum softly, the same grating, jaunty tune that had been in the elevator back in Miami. 

A server in a sleek black dress slipped past him and Clint turned, just enough to keep with the traffic flow and not overbalance her tray of champagne. 

"Incoming from the floor above you. Take the ramp to your left down two floors, check your watch on the middle floor." 

He couldn't hear anything outraged past the din of the casino, and he blended perfectly since she'd made him shed his jacket and tie. A tourist that'd had too much, a businessman that'd lost at the wrong kind of cards. She knew him, knew the room and what he needed, and Clint knew enough to trust Darcy with his life.

A glance at his watch, a remaining twenty until his extraction, but rerouted, they'd been rerouted to a secondary location that she hadn't given him yet. Clatter a few floors above, breaking glass and the warble of a tray hitting the floor, something wasn't right. A little bit of screaming, some raised voices even though nobody else seemed to care and he sped up just enough so the ramp spat him out at the ground floor. 

"Doors are to your immediate left. Act irritated, a bit of a hurry. They haven't seen you yet but I need you out of there now. Grab a car."

Burner dug out of his pocket, sleek touch screen face illuminated and showing ten unread texts from a woman named Molly. Burner wife for a burner phone, preloaded with the proper kind of pictures and whistles to keep things believable. Clint scowled at it, made a show of staring at the messages for a minute before shaking his head and swiping them away. Dropped it back into his pocket as he passed the front desk, rooted in his suit pants like he'd lost his keys in them as he crossed the threshold, Rio de Janiero was a glowing beacon of neon and liquor in the night. Whole place was going to go up in flames one of these days, and Clint jogged down the steps for the casino, arm thrown out to hail a taxi.

"Get to the Copacabana, your extraction'll be all lined up and waiting."

Brightly colored and eager for his money, a cab pulled itself up just as he dug his phone back out. Called Molly as he pulled the door open and dropped himself into the tinted backseat.

"What, the earpiece wasn't enough, old man?"

The ear piece was plenty, but with the phone tucked to his ear and a smile on his face, Clint sank into the seat. Lazy sprawl, legs tossed out so he took up more room than he needed until his behavior read as decidedly American.

"Copacabana. Baby, I haven't talked to you in hours, you tryin' to say you haven't missed me at all?"

"You get to explain to Coulson why you just  _ had _ to call me."

"Maybe I wanted to hear your voice!"

"Or maybe you just didn't want to get stuck talking to the driver. He's clean, three kids, same wife for the last twenty-four years, you're not sitting in a bomb." 

Eyes rolling, head tipping against the window so he could stare out of it into the brilliant nightlife. Cristo Redentor stood in the distance, arms outstretched wide to embrace all of Brazil in his loving, forgiving arms. Thousands made a pilgrimage daily just to see him, to stand beneath that solid stone gaze and lament their sins. Soon dawn would come and they would gather like a flock, desperate for some sort of sign that they would never have. He had never believed in God, not since the circus, not since before, but he believed in the things he could put his hands on. 

He believed in her, and the raspy hum of her voice in his ear. 

“I miss you.”

“You miss your bed and your dog. Can’t say I blame you, Bagheera’s probably screaming his head off thinkin’ he’s never going to get fed again.”

Bagheera screamed about everything from what she’d said, but that didn’t stop him from smiling. 

“Going to bring you with me next time. Let you lay out on the beach all day until you’re drunk on the sun.”

Sputtering sound from over the ear piece like it’d come from his phone, the driver gave a soft sort of smile in the front of the cab as he turned toward the marina. He sounded like a lovedrunk fool, a husband pulled away from his wife for business and miserable for it. Young and in love and ridiculous like only a devoted husband could ever be, but every lie had a truth in it somewhere if it held any weight. 

“You’re dumb. There’s a boat called  _ a moça bonita _ , your captain is Alejo and he’ll have you to Pier da Piedade in six hours, where you’ll be picked up by a plane to get you out of Rio and into Minas Gerais. We’ll get you home soon baby, take a nap on the boat.”

“Molly,”

His chest rumbled with it, his throat a little tight and it ached how true that simple sentence was. Because he did, loved her so much he burned with it even if he didn’t know a single thing about her face, about the things that made her whole apart from the way she liked her coffee and how much of his shit she could put up with. Fuck if he didn’t want to know her, tangle his fingers in her hair and feel the way she laughed against his mouth and Clint’s hand gripped tight at the burner until the plastic creaked under the pressure. 

Darcy deserved better than this, whoever she was, but he wanted to be good enough to deserve her.

“I love you.”

-

  
  


“Should I get a manicure or a pedicure?”

“Why can’t you just get a mani-pedi?”

“Barton, baby, you know how much it costs to get a mani-pedi done in this city? A good mani-pedi with the peppermint lotion wraps, or shit, a facial that I didn’t do while sitting my fat ass on my bathroom sink?”

“Darlin’, your ass is perfect.”

“You’re so sweet. You’ve got six men coming from your left.”

“You always say the sexiest things.”

-

The dreamy way she’d sang his name on their next mission had made the couple hundred dropped on a Pepper Pott’s approved spa more than worth it.

-

_ ‘I thought you weren’t being hopeless?’ _

Flat eyed, a raised brow, her expression was all too unimpressed and far too put together for how little sleep they’d gotten. Pale bruises beneath her eyes and the faintest tremble to her fingers, the only things that gave away her exhaustion were things he only saw because of how well he knew her, and Clint scowled faintly at her as he watched her sign. 

Stuffing her coffee cup at her before clutching the pot himself, Clint hopped up to sit on the island counter across from her. Glared a little harder when she let one foot out first and then the other until both were crossed at the ankle and braced on a single knee. 

_ ‘I’m not hopeless, I’m-’ _

_ ‘Acting like a thirteen year old with his first crush. It’s sickening.’ _

Eyes rolling, coffee pot tipped against his mouth to take a drink and scald his tongue, Clint watched her eyes narrow. Her chest heave with a little bit of silent laughter at his expense and Natasha leaned back against the cabinets with all the grace of a lazy cat. Flash of a sharp toothed grin, cheerful and delighted like only he ever got to see and her fingers waggled at him, single handed as she cradled her steaming mug. Craned sideways enough to dump an unholy amount of cream into her cup until his own stomach threatened to curdle at the sight of it all.

_ ‘I resent that.’ _

The way she teased him, what she'd done to her coffee, the fact that she knew him so well that she  _ could _ tease him like that. Too many years tucked up in each others pockets until they'd gone half feral with prolonged separation, she was the sister he'd never had for all that his sister-in-law came close. But Natasha and Laura were two different kind of monsters that knew him far to well, and Clint couldn't scowl as hard as he wanted to. Grating and irritating and enough to make him want to pull at his hair at the worst of times, but that was love if he'd ever known it, his brothers laughter at his wife's sarcastic antics where Clint had never thought he'd hear it again.

_ 'You're drinking coffee out of the pot, I don't think you get to have an opinion.' _

Single raised finger his only response, he didn't need his aids to know what Natasha sounded like when she laughed. Her smile cut in half and dimmed, gaze flicking to her left, the only signals he needed to know that they weren't alone anymore.

Pietro, the younger of the Maximoff twins with his shock of silver hair and an indulgent smile on his sharp face, tall body angled so he could give his attention to the little brunette that walked beside him. Animated, she talked with her hands and a full lips, loose and easy and almost clumsy with her motions. None of the grace of Natasha or the spatial awareness of any agent, he couldn't hear a thing she said but the woman spoke with her entire body. 

Plump, an oversized sweatshirt that he'd seen on Pietro so much it was familiar and bare feet, she was nothing more than a beautiful civilian. Pietro seemed at ease like he only ever did with Wanda, the fidget twitch that lived in the boys bones dormant for once. She made him comfortable, whoever she was, even as she danced into the kitchen and peered into the fridge. Got rid of the haunted shadows he'd come with until Pietro looked normal. Pulled out a bottle of berry lemonade from its hiding spot in the crisper and said something to Nat with a wry twist to her lips and a wink that had the other woman laughing.

Natasha, laughing and making him reevaluate everything about the situation, because that was genuine. Unmasked even as Pietro caught the girl by the hood of the sweatshirt and reeled her back in to scuttle the two of them out of the room, made her arms pinwheel and flail before she just seemed to latch onto his bicep and accept her fate. Tiffany blue polish dug in, just a little bit of glitter and he watched her head roll so she could frown up at Pietro as he pulled her away.

_ 'She from upstate?' _

_ 'Lewis?' _ Inquisitive, one handed and slow, more on the side of fingerspelling but her shoulders still shook with laughter. Like she could hear something out in the hall that he couldn't, Nat only gave him half of her attention and it itched.  _ 'No, she's one of ours. She just doesn't leave the Bank unless one of the boys makes her.' _

-

When had his missions turned into their missions?

-

"Why do they call it the Bank?"

"Fuck babe, I don't know why they name things half of what they do. I'm assuming its got Latin roots, banks have been around for thousands of years. Why, do I need to google it? Is this a jeopardy thing?"

"What? No, no, it's not a- the handlers hub."

"Oh, the Bank!" 

A little drawn out and long, just enough miscommunication to make him chuckle as he leaned back in his chair. Surveillance had never been a favorite of his, impossible not to get antsy when all he was really allowed to do was watch and wait, but Darcy made things easier. The LA sun had gone down hours ago but the world was still bright. Over forty hours and he still hadn't left the little shithole of an apartment they'd stuffed him into, stuck on observation after that stunt in Rio had rubbed somebody the wrong way.

"I mean, shit, its kind of like a bank? It keeps all of us, and we're the magic eyes in the sky that know everything. Like skynet only with le- well, I can't even say less murder, there's plenty of murder still, especially when ya'll don't turn off your body cams."

"Sweetheart."

"And its not like I'm opposed to a little bloodshed, because like, I understand the necessity of it all, I just don't tend to like it. I'm trying to eat sometimes, and I've gotten real good at making sure you don't hear chewing sounds-"

"Babe."

"-but there's just nothing appetizing about trying to eat cold Thai food at thee in the morning while your man is pulling out another man's stomach."

"Darcy."

Silence on the other end of the line, embarrassed and hushed and he couldn't help but smile. Because he was  _ her _ man, unbridled affection where he wanted but didn't deserve it. Couldn't help the way he grinned even if she didn't see it, the way her runaway mouth made him want to know the shape of her lips. 

"I did it again, didn't I?"

"You did."

A groan, low and curling and drawn out, the sort of sound that went straight to his blood. She didn't have a single clue what she did to him, and that wasn't fair.

"Look, its your faul-"

"We should get dinner sometime."

Adrenaline shot to the belly, he'd just said that, hadn't he? All that nerve worked up and there he'd gone, hadn't even seen her face and he'd already made a fool of himself.

"What?"

"What?"

"Clin-"

Rattle of glass and a billow of heat, the building across the street went up in a fiery explosion that blasted out the windows for his shitty little squatting spot. Heart thundering, bile burn in his throat and Clint hoisted himself up off of the floor where he'd been knocked, collapsible bow and quiver on his back and a pistol strapped to his thigh as he threw himself out the window. 

"You've got an SUV coming from the south. There were civilians in that building Barton, fucking move it."

-

She didn't even notice him at first, cross legged on top of the fridge at almost two in the morning because he couldn't sleep. He'd gotten too used to the time difference in New Zealand, the time change had turned him inside out until he didn't know how he was supposed to be able to sleep. Wasn't even really tired, not like he should have been, not like he'd been this time five years ago. Wade told him he needed to get out of his own head, but that sort of talk was rich coming from the guy that talked to himself. 

But she didn't even realize that he was there, wandered into the kitchen in one of Pietro's shirts, so wide in the neck that it dipped toward her ample cleavage. The second time he'd seen her in clothing he recognized as somebody else's, and she scuttled through the kitchen on bare feet to the coffee pot. 

Fresh, it'd stopped brewing a few minutes ago but he hadn't gotten down to get a cup yet and Clint watched her go onto her toes to pull one down. It didn't look like she had pants on, thighs pale and bare and he wondered dimly how soft her skin was. What she felt like, sounded like, but he had a woman he wanted and her pretty face didn't change that.

He put in effort to land with a sound even if he couldn't hear it and watched the harsh flinch travel up her spine. Mug on the counter, coffee spilled across the pink hued granite, her eyes were black in the dim light where she stared at him. Horrified and startled with a hand crushed to her chest, full mouth moving rapidly and something sharp on her features. Outrage, indignation, but she wore Pietro's shirt like a second skin and Clint skirted around her out of the darkened kitchen without a backwards glance.

-

“Your contact’s late.”

“It happens.”

That didn’t mean she had to like it even though they both knew it happened. People were late, people kept him waiting like they thought he would just flake out and leave, Clint expected it at this point. Expecting it was different than liking it, than being okay with it, and Clint sighed, 

slitted eyes behind the sunglasses he’d plucked from a stall a few blocks back. Chicago was particularly breezy for this time of year, the July heat having rolled in off the lake until he felt like he was going to sweat out of his skin entirely. 

He’d rather be in some shorts on his rooftop in Bed Stuy, would rather be sipping on a beer and laid out on his back as he and Wade watched the clouds, but the world had other plans. Plans that involved him in a pair of jeans and a jersey jacket he never wanted to wear again. There was something absolutely horrible about this entire experience, and he hadn’t even been able to eat a hot dog like he’d wanted to. 

“It shouldn’t, I don’t like it.”

“Well, we can’t exactly change that, princess.”

Something unintelligible before she went silent over the line, and the next twenty minutes were spent like that. The ruckus of life going on all around him, and Clint stayed seated on the curving retaining wall of Millenium Park as he waited. He could  _ smell _ the hot dogs, could practically taste them from the vendor that had set up shop a little ways down, making money and selling food like he thought he had the right. 

Families on their way to the Bean, on their way to the Pier or from the Aquarium and everything felt so blissfully normal. This would have been wonderful if he hadn’t been on mission, would have been great if he could actually talk to her like he wanted to. Pick up where he’d made a spectacular fool of himself over the comms, try to continue a conversation that he wasn’t sure he wanted to have. Didn’t even know the color of her hair but he knew how she liked her coffee and the things that made her laugh, he just wanted to see her smile. 

“Barton-”

“Not now.”

He was in public, no headset in sight and no way to pretend he wasn’t talking to himself. Careful, discreet, the most care he could put into trying to not look like a raving lunatic, but the anxiety grew the longer the mark didn’t show. 

Another five, a vague clacking sound from her end of the line, either a takeout container or a keyboard, he never understood half the things she did on her side of things. An entire world he’d never seen, he could only imagine the cluster of minions that bustled around the Bank, could only assume what it looked like. If her eyes crinkled when she laughed, if her body swayed a certain way, but there were things he wouldn’t know if he couldn’t get his head out of his ass. 

“I don’t thin-”

“I’m supposed to be waiting.”

He was supposed to be a drug lord with an itch he could never seem to scratch, too much ambition and never enough product to fill his blood. No limit to the drugs he wanted to ingest, to the women he wanted to buy, the arms he wanted to sell, he was Joey Fitzroy where he couldn’t be Clint Barton. 

A child ran by with a burst of squealing laughter and he watched her go, red ponytail bobbling and her little sandals smacking on the pavement as she went. Her parents chased after her, mother lagging behind while her father raced after her and he watched as they rounded the retaining wall, disappeared out of sight until their voices were swallowed up by the crowd. 

“Clint, it’s a fucking trap!”

Harsh bite of her voice kicked him into action, pulled him off the ledge until he could throw himself into the cluster of tourists swarming the Bean. Toward Michigan Ave and the Macy’s building that shouldn’t have been that damn big, too many people all wrapped up in a single location. Because the mark hadn’t shown, because something had gone south and Darcy sounded livid for it, another harsh clack as she tried to keep up with him digitally. 

“You’ve got a van coming in from the north-two coming in from the north, Clint I need you to run.”

“I can’t just-”

“Fucking run, baby, I’m a handler not a coroner! There’s a department store on your right that connects up to the tram, I need you to get to the roof level.”

Change of plans like he changed clothes and he did just that, ducked into the store and sprinted through the ground floor, shedding his jersey top as he went. A simpler white shirt, old and worn and as practical as it was comfortable. Natasha had laughed at him before he’d left, but Clint didn’t have it in him to even be smug now.

“Service stairs on the left wal-left damn it, good, good, there we go baby, that’ll take you straight up. I can force the electro-mag locks when you get to them but I need you to hustle.”

Like he hadn’t been running already and he huffed, skidded sideways and burst through the service door so he could hurry up the stairs. The first flight, the third, the fifth until it spat him into the maintenance level, until it gave him roof access on a final door that clicked open just as he hit the last step. Heat once more, sharper wind now that he’d gotten up as high as he could and the tracks for the subway rattled ahead of him. 

“You’re shitting me.”

“Get on that fucking train, Clint.”

Get on the speeding fucking train, like it was that easy. Like she just expected him to jump, hear the order and do it just because she’d said to and damn it, this woman was going to be the death of him. 

Pushing off the stairwell with a sharp sprint and Clint couldn’t help the punched shout that burst from his chest as he went airborne toward the cart.

“God damn it, Darcy!”

-

Four hours late on a report he was supposed to have turned in and Clint let himself off the elevator with a hum to FRIDAY in thanks. The communal floor was the last place he wanted to be, but the coffee was free and the friendly AI in the ceiling would keep it fresh as long as he kept working. There were far better things he had to do than finish paperwork, but he couldn’t just go home to feed his dog and fed himself before collapsing in his bed. He had papers for Hill to finish, shit he needed to do for his tenants as far as sorting work orders went and he  _ might _ need to get dog food before getting into the building. It was just his luck then that he found Pietro’s girl when he just wanted to get his shit done.

He’d seen her once, and suddenly it was like he couldn’t get away from her. 

Sleepy, heavy lidded eyes but there were bruises under them like she hadn’t slept, something like a yawn on her full mouth that hadn’t fallen yet. Fuck everything but she smiled as soon as she saw him, cheerful and sweet and  _ welcoming _ like she thought she knew him. Like just because he hugged the twins and bumped into her more than he did Thor meant he knew Lewis from anybody. 

What sort of name was Lewis anyway?

The sort of name for a woman that swayed toward him on clumsy feet like she thought  _ she _ was going to hug him. Something conversational on her lips that he couldn’t hear, something down right fucking pleasant about her face, who’d given her the right to be that fucking pretty? That soft, that touchable and thick until he wanted to press bruises into her pale thighs. Her eyes were blue, a hazel mix of the color with little bits of amber shot throughout, all heavy lids and thick lashes. Because even her eyes had to be pretty, of course Pietro’s girl would be a looker. The boy hadn’t had much go right in his life, he deserved to look at something pretty like that every day if it made him happy. 

But she kept trying to talk to Clint like  _ he _ made her happy, and he scowled at her. Shoulders squared and a tired irritation in his bones, she would have been fine if she’d just kept her eyes to herself. She was Pietro’s girl and he had a woman he needed to figure out how to actually talk to, and it didn’t matter if she was the prettiest thing he’d seen, he didn’t have the time to talk to her. He  _ couldn’t _ talk to her, not when she wasn’t his, not when she wouldn’t be.

Mouth moving and an almost eager smile on her face, there was a flush to her cheeks, there was something a touch bashful about her like he’d done something fantastic just by stepping off the elevator. 

“Don’t you have anything useful to be doing?”

Wounded, rocked back like he’d struck her, she looked at him like he’d hurt her. Like he’d missed something somewhere along the way, like they knew each other well enough that he could hurt her, and Clint wanted to take it back. Her mouth pressed tight and her eyes went shiny with tears, Lewis looked at him like he’d broken her heart with a single sentence. His own had never hurt quite so bad, tangled up over a stranger that he should even look at too long. 

Message received, she took a stumbling step back, followed by another before she twisted on her heel. Bare feet on the crisp tile and she left him standing there just at the cusp of the communal lounge feeling like the asshole Barney always insisted he was. 

-

They sent him to Madrid, cut and dry as far as missions went, just some data collection and some resource destruction, nothing that would take more than a few days. Nothing that should have taken long at all, nothing that he shouldn’t have enjoyed. It was better than surveillance, felt almost Bond like, she was sure to get a kick out of that. 

Except-

“What do you mean I’ve been reassigned?”

Coulson sighed across from him, looked almost like this conversation hurt. Like having to have Clint seated on the other side of his desk caused some kind of physical agony. Good, he wasn’t the only one in pain then, he wasn’t the only one so uncomfortable it actually hurt. If he had to suffer, so did Phil, an eye for an eye and all that Soviet propaganda that Nat liked to mock when she was drunk enough. 

“You’ve been given a different handler-”

“I’ve had the same handler for the last three years, Phil!”

He shouldn’t have gotten out of bed today. He’d had a feeling the moment he’d woken up and Lucky had been on the floor rather than at his feet, it was going to be one of those days. 

“I am well aware, Clint, and I know how well the two of you worked together.”

“Then why the fu-”

“She asked for a transfer, Clint.”

He remembered how it felt when Loki’d had him, hollowed out and empty, used and scooped out with a spoon until he’d been nothing but an angry, battered shell. It felt an awful lot like that now, like when he’d been unable to breathe from how much everything hurt, unable to hear past the violent screaming of his own blood in his ears even with his aids in. Solid ground had always been a bit of a foreign concept, something a little too good to be true until he couldn’t really trust it and now it was gone. 

Yanked out from under him, and his fingers fought to curl into fists on the arms of the chair he’d taken. 

“Why?”

They’d had something, they had, he knew they had. That hadn’t been all in his head, she’d given just as good as she’d gotten and flirted through conversations with him until he’d burned to touch her somehow. So where had things gone wrong, what could possibly have-

“Agent Lewis asked if there was anything useful she could be doing instead. Given the success rate the two of you had as a team, I was reluctant to allow her transfer, but she had a favor in her pocket that she finally called in.”

_ Agent Lewis. _

Agent Lewis, Darcy Lewis, because of course he would fuck things up so spectacularly from the first real chance he’d been given. Made such a complete wreck of things that she’d gone so far as to run away from him. Taken his biting remark to heart and excused herself to try and be more useful, like she hadn’t been the only thing keeping him alive with single handed determination for the last three years. 

He knew what she looked like now, and he almost wished he didn’t, because for all her pretty pale skin and her hazel-blue eyes, Clint knew what she looked like when she was trying her best not to cry. 

“When do I leave?”

-

He came back from Madrid with two cracked ribs, a concussion and a handler named Claire who immediately demanded a reassignment. 

-

It all sort of bled together from there, days to weeks, weeks to months, he’d been without her for long enough that New Years came and went and he had no idea what to do with himself. No idea what to do with the little pile of trinkets that had collected on his coffee table with nowhere else to go now that he couldn’t scuttle them along to her desk via the mailroom. She wasn’t his handler anymore, which meant he had no excuse to be bringing her tacky little souvenirs from every location that he went to just because she’d once complained about her work space being empty. 

A little Eiffel Tower carved to look like it was made out of bread had been the latest, and he’d at least recognized the problem enough to say it was a problem. Which had had him leaving his apartment all together, waving at a few tenants as he went before dropping himself out into the bustle of midmorning New York. 

He’d intended to use the gyms at the tower, needed something that would actually fight back even if it was just one of FRIDAY’s simulations. Clint had set off at a jog for most of the trip, weaving through foot traffic when he wasn’t on a subway and puttering through the busy streets like he was any other civilian just trying to go about his day. Sometimes it paid not to be Steve, and everything was fine even as he pulled his jangling phone out of his pocket, because Wade would just take it as a challenge and find him if he ignored the man. 

Unknown number and he slowed to a walk, frowned at his phone for a minute before answering with a swipe of his thumb. 

“Hello?”

A muffled sob on the other end of the line, wet and thick like someone had tried to catch it behind their fingers. Pulled at his stomach and gave a flare of adrenaline through his blood, he couldn’t protect someone that he couldn’t see. 

“Hey, I’m going to need you t-”

“Someone got in the Bank.”

_ “Darcy?” _

He felt like he was going to be sick. 

Couldn’t keep the panic from his voice where it’d dropkicked his heart and Clint froze where he stood, because that sentence made sense even if he hated it. Someone had gotten in the Bank, which meant Darcy wasn’t safe. His girl had called him even after he’d ruined anything they could have been, like she’d known he would do whatever he could to find her. 

Soft hyperventilation, the telltale pant of anxiety and a kind of fear she couldn’t keep in check. She was going to make herself sick if she kept that up, ran the risk of getting light headed, passing out, he couldn’t do shit if he couldn’t find her. 

"Darcy, breathe."

Something like a whimper, all choked up and bitten back, somebody knocked into him where he'd halted to a standstill on the sidewalk. They nearly got thrown to the concrete, were lucky that he had more important things to worry about for once in his life. 

"The Old National on 5th and 28th, they got in through the secondary access. Th-they knew how to get in, they shot people and it’s-” Gunfire, that was gunfire in the background, ratcheting pops of sound almost covered up by the way her breath hitched. The audible flinch she gave with every single shot, the way he could almost hear her teeth chatter. Screaming somewhere in the distance, the boom of a bullet that seemed to silence everything apart from her own fearful keening. An executioner's shot, they hadn’t come to take anything, they’d come to cripple. “ _ Clint!” _

“I’m comin’ baby, where are you.”

He would have thought the call had disconnected if he hadn’t heard more gunfire in the background, muffled screaming, there was distance between her and the fuckers that had gotten inside. A quick text to Nat to alert the team, the address but he sprinted through the crowd at a breakneck pace at the risk of knocking somebody over, getting hit by a car. Just a few blocks from where he needed to be, so damn close and he’d almost missed her entirely, would have if he’d left his phone on silent like he’d planned on. 

“Darcy, ba-”

“Cupboard in the breakroom, i-it’s cracked enough so I can see out.”

“Good girl, you don’t move, you hear me?”

A muffled sob of agreement, quiet like she’d covered her mouth with a hand and his heart felt like it was going to punch out of his ribs listening to her. The quiet, desperate fear and the way she steadily fell apart with a phone the only thing connecting them, of all the times not to be able to fucking touch her. Just a block, he just had a block left, he’d passed that bank countless times and never even thought twice about it, but that was the entire point, wasn’t it?

“Baby, how do I-”

“Alley entrance, use the maintenance stairs to the basement.”

“Perfect. Keep quiet, okay honey? I’m going to keep you on the phone as long as I can.”

Soft breathing when he didn’t expect to get anything at all, a single vibration text that backup was inroute and he broke off from the main street to spring down the alley instead at the side of the bank. He couldn’t hear a single thing from the outside, no gunfire, no screaming, everything was absolutely undisturbed like only New York could be at midday while his whole world came crashing down. 

Through the side door in the alley, as nondescript as the one across the single car length span and it opened with a single hard kick. And there, there was the echo of gunfire, there was the muted screaming, lost to the outside world as soon as the door slapped shut behind him but Clint just dove down the stairs. Listened to the sounds of her trying to keep from panicking and moved as quickly as he could, down the steps until he bled into the maintenance hall, bright overhead lights and the  _ pop pop pop _ of a gun. 

An unfortunate agent had taken station on the other side of the door he burst through and Clint landed on him with a heavy weight on the man’s shoulders. Didn’t recognize his face but he knew the body armor that AIM’s grunts wore so well that he didn’t care, wrenched the Sig from his hand and beat the side of his head with it until his temple bled readily and the man stopped struggling. Quick check, an almost full clip and he rocked to his feet, back to the wall so he could creep around the corner. 

Crash from the floor above him, the calvary had arrived and could deal with the brunt of it, he had a princess to rescue if he could just find the tower. 

The quick burst scream came from his pocket this time though, came from his  _ phone _ , panicked and screeching and a litany of  _ no no no  _ that kicked at the horrified rage that’d made a home for itself in his ribs. In his blood, infected and boiling, he couldn’t get his phone when he could hear her screaming through it just as much as he could hear her screaming from down the hall, and Clint ran faster, lungs burning like they were going to catch fire if he pushed himself any faster. 

“Clint!”

The sharp boom of a gunshot, the split second of silence that followed through the phone as his heart stopped beating. They’d shot her, they’d  _ hurt _ her, but the way she screamed with a crackle of agony meant she was alive even if she didn’t want to be. A hurt and bleeding Darcy was better than a Darcy with her brains blown out and he broke through the door for the breakroom with a boom of sound. 

Her hair was brown, a rich deep cluster of curls tangled around her face and saturated with blood where she’d hit the ground. Pale skinned even before the pain and he snarled, a single bullet through the throat before the agent could even turn around to find him. The man’s body hit the floor before he stopped gurgling, but Clint leapt over him to drop to his knees at her shoulder. Instinctive and she tried to roll away from him, caught her by her forearm and locked her in with his knees and thighs until she couldn’t jostle herself further. 

The round had caught her throat, the base of it where it connected to her shoulder because she’d fought, hadn’t stayed still like the agent had probably wanted and Clint put a heavy pressure there. Felt her blood bloom between his fingers and his stomach rioted at the feeling, the shock set glaze steadily slipping into her gaze and taking the struggle from her body. 

“I’m here baby, I’m right here. Keep those eyes on me, there we go.”

Tiffany blue acrylic nails and she gripped his wrists so hard she was going to cut him open but he’d take it if it meant she was still there. She couldn’t leave him now, not when he had too much to fix, too much to apologize for. Darcy deserved better than that even if he didn’t deserve Darcy, and Clint pushed harder until her blood flowed a little less. He would take her bruised if it meant he still had a chance to have her. 

“I’ve got you, darlin’.”

-

Her eyes were blue hazel, amber shot at the center closest to her pupils before they bled out into a crystal, freshwater blue. Thick lashed and made sleepy with heavy, bedroom seduction lids, she had a killer face for an unimpressed glare. A mouth that lended itself perfectly toward an irritated pout, fat and full lipped and cleaned from where she’d scrubbed her carmine red lipstick away. 

Because Darcy wore lipstick, a bright splash of red across her wide mouth that made her pale skin look porcelain. She wore dresses that flared at the tight nip of her waist with full skirts that would have swished about her knees, though the only one he’d seen had had a pastel pink and black carousel print along the skirt. Any other time and her dress would have been fun, her glittery pink flats would have been the perfect sort of thing to spin her around in circles in, Darcy when she was awake dressed like the sort of girl that just wanted to have a good time.

“You’re shitting me.”

Currently, Darcy sat in a hospital bed that looked like it was going to swallow her whole. Her curls had been a wild riot around her face and shoulders before he’d braided it back in a simple plait, and while it was out of her way now he could see the gauze against her throat and the bruise that’d spread from underneath it. A few centimeters further into the meat of her throat and it would have clipped her jugular. A few centimeters further and he would have lost her before he even had her. 

She stared at him a little like she wanted to hit him, and he would have let her with no small amount of glee. As it was, he’d pulled one of the chairs as close to her bed as it could possibly get, his legs folded up into it and her hand clasped in his so he could feel her pulse with his fingertips. Proof that she was alive, as if the tearful ‘fuck you’ hadn’t been enough, and Clint hadn’t been shy in the way he’d pressed her knuckles to his mouth about an hour ago. 

“Nope.”

“Okay, let me get this straight: you didn’t have your aids in, because you weren’t on a mission-”

“They ache if I leave them in too long-”

“And you’d never looked at the servers to figure out who your handler was-”

“In my defense, I’ve bee-”

“So while I’m trying to get you to talk to me off shift after my  _ best friend _ -”

“Do we really need t-”

“Who you thought I was dating, which, I'm not stepping on Barnes’ toes, thank  _ you _ -”

“Okay, we’re coming back to that later-”

“Had to actually drag me away from you-”

“Can we no-”

“You’ve been butthurt because you thought someone else’s girl was getting your dick hard?”

Smile pressed into her knuckles because he couldn’t seem to help himself around her, Clint relished in the way she smiled at him. Like he was an idiot, the most stupid man she’d ever had to deal with, but the iron clench of her grip said everything else. 

“That sounds about right.”

Wheezy, punchy laughter that had to be almost painful from how she winced, but she couldn’t seem to not laugh at him. To not smile at him, not wriggle a little so she leaned closer to him. Look at him like he’d given her the whole damn world with a pearl edged, Tiffany blue bow. Like he belonged to her now because she’d sunk her pretty manicured nails in, and Clint could think of far worse fates, far worse places to belong than in the palm of Darcy Lewis’ hand. 

“I love you.”

Widened eyes, sharp pressure from where her nails bit at the back of his palm but her smile went soft around the edges. A pretty pink blush swept across her pale cheeks, her head rolling a little on the pillows he’d stuffed behind her to keep her comfortable and she just smiled. Smiled like she didn’t know what to do with him, like she didn’t know what to do without him. 

Free hand lifted from the soft hospital blankets and her ring and middle finger folded down toward her palm while the others stayed extended. Her hand shook slightly, after effects of the good drugs and the way her speech had been slurred when they’d finally let him in the room, but she gave him the gesture readily. 

_ ‘I love you.’ _

Grinning, heart throbbing in his chest in the vice grip of his ribs and Clint dipped his head to press a kiss to her bruised knuckles.


End file.
